WaPo: Lifting the administration's veil

The Washington Post has a great rundown in Sunday's paper about the extensive efforts at secrecy pushed by the White House over the past seven years and the resulting backlash this near-total information blackout has caused.

Lawsuits over administration e-mail messages, court-ordered disclosure of presidential visitor logs, congressional reform of the Freedom of Information Act, declassification of the national intelligence budget and more have all been equal and opposite reactions to an unprecedented regime of secret government. It's a critique that crosses party affiliations.

"The administration has brought these challenges on itself," Republican Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) told the paper. "By trying to keep secret information that doesn't need to be secret, it invites skepticism of all of its secrecy claims."